Whether we are willing to admit it or not, many of us have inexplicably become obsessed with the Real Housewives. I have made this blog to compile some of the interesting background information I have collected on the wives, their husbands, and their friends.

Biographies and Other Information on the Housewives and their Husbands:

Fish

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Aviva Drescher Biography

Born and raised in Manhattan in 1970, Aviva attended The Fieldston School and has a BA from Vassar College. She went on to get her Masters in French Literature from NYU and her JD from Benjamin Cardozo School of Law. Aviva has four children ranging from the ages of ten to one and is married to Reid Drescher, Wall Street investment banker.

HOW SHE LOST HER LEG:

“…she lost her leg in a horrifying farm accident upstate at age six.
“It was a genius idea to go ride a conveyor belt in a barn that was
meant to remove cow manure,” Ms. Drescher said, rolling her eyes.
Along with a black pencil skirt from Dolce and Gabbana paired with a
burgundy bow blouse and cashmere sweater vest by Gucci, Ms. Drescher was
sporting a pair of thigh-high black boots. She always wears thigh-high
boots.
The initial amputation was not the ideal surgery, she recalled. “The
problem was, as a child, they only amputated several inches above ankle,
so the amputation was very awkward. I’d get abrasions all the time. I
constantly had infections.” At 26, Ms. Drescher underwent elective
surgery to remove more of the leg, which gave her more skin and padding.
She told the story casually, with self-depreciating wit—eager to make
us comfortable and to dispel any tiny violins that might launch into an
overture.
“When I was growing, I’d have to get a new prosthesis every six months,” Mrs. Drescher noted …”

HOW AVIVA MET HER HUSBAND, REID… AND RHONY:

Ms. Drescher makes allusions to The Brady Bunch when talking about her current husband, Reid Drescher,
who is the CEO and president of investment firm Spencer Clarke LLC and a
partner and portfolio manager of the private hedge fund Cape One
Financial. (Their estimated net worth, by the family’s own account, is
in the seven figures, though Internet speculation suggests much higher
numbers.) They have four children together, including the two oldest
step-children they “merged” over from former marriages.Ms. Drescher met
her Prince Charming at Bed, Bath and Beyond when Mr. Drescher told his
daughter Veronica to go play with her son Harrison, so he’d have a
reason to approach the statuesque single mother.
Even their engagement story is too adorable: “When Reid proposed, he
gave Harrison a ring to give his daughter Veronica, and Harrison asked
her to be his sister,” Ms. Drescher recalled. “So we ended up merging
his daughter from another wife and my son into a single family.”
Then came the two children with Reid: Hudson and Sienna, four
children altogether, ranging from 10 to one and a half. Her life, by Ms.
Drescher’s own account, is pretty home-oriented.
“The biggest difference between Reid and Harry is that Harry was more
a going-out type of guy…he was into socializing. Reid is all about
family and work. I’m not a golfing widow. He’s hands-on.”
Aha! There’s the proof that Ms. Drescher cannot, will not be a
Housewife: Of the eight women who have starred in the New York version
of the show, just three were married at the time of filming. (Bethenny Frankel’s spin-off shows Bethenny Getting Married and Bethenny Ever After documented her marriage to Jason Hoppy after she left Housewives.)
Traditionally, a married Housewife is also a busy Housewife (think of Jill Zarin,
who spent so much time running her own business and hosting charity
events that her family is portrayed as an afterthought). Or she’s a
co-dependent Housewife (like Alex McCord, who was never onscreen without her flamboyantly accented hubby, Simon Van Kempen, who usually had more drama with the rest of the ladies than his wife did).
Housewives almost always have jobs—which makes “housewife” sort of a misnomer—while Ms. Drescher doesn’t.
A stay-at-home mom who doesn’t party (“I can honestly say I’ve never
inhaled…I’ve never even been drunk!” she said) joining up with Bravo’s
cast of egoists? Um, no.
She was born in Manhattan, where she grew up as Aviva Teichner on the
Upper West Side. Her parents, George and Ingrid, were beautiful and
wealthy; her mother a strict German former model, and her father, an
investment banker. Ms. Drescher went to private schools like Fieldston
(where she dated a “really hot” football player), then Vassar and then
NYU for a Master’s in French Literature—which led to some time in France
where she dated a club owner and hung out with Claudia Schiffer and Naomi Campbell. Then she grabbed a J.D. from Cardozo.

Aviva is currently anticipated to star on the newest
season of the popular reality TV show, The Real Housewives of New York
City. Backstabbing friends, bickering husbands and finding a fabulous
designer handbag are some of the “hardships” faced by the women of
Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise. But Aviva Drescher experienced, and
overcame, a horrifying real-life tragedy before she was even a teen.
Aviva, 41- one of three new women reported to be replacing Kelly
Killoren Bensimon, Cindy Barshop, Alex McCord and Jill Zarin on the
series—was just 6 years old when her left foot got caught in a
barn-cleaning machine’s conveyor belt at her family’s upstate New York
dairy farm in 1977. Rescue workers spent “three hours sawing free my
mangled, manure-ridden leg,” she later revealed, but gangrene eventually
set in, and her food and ankle had to be amputated two months later.